Raspberry Pi Robot With Streaming Video And a Web Remote Control #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi
ToffeeBot streams live video and can be controlled with your mobile phone. via for toffee
I have had various bits of robots floating around for a while now and never actually pulled them all together. I’ve made both a Scratch, and a PS3 controlled, Pibrella powered bot which I must blog about one of these days. I also built one from LEGO motors and a SN754410 H-bridge a year or two back, but the motors were old (20+ years) and it didn’t get far.
Hardware
4tronix MicRoCon – It’s an all in one platform that provides power conversion from 6-9v down to 5v to so it can power the Pi as well as an H-bridge to drive the motors. The other feature I will make use of is some 5v connectors for servos. Mine is the v1.1 from early 2014, v3 is the current version hence the change in looks.
AdaFruit Pan and Tilt – This I picked up from Pimoroni. It’s a 2 servo device that has a base plate to mount items on like a……
Raspberry Pi Camera – If you don’t know what this is; it’s a webcam that plugs directly into the Pi, not via USB. Loads of places stock these
Car/Bot Chassis – Mine is one of these from EBay.
WiFi – Yes, you could do this wired, but that would be very limiting!
Software
Flask- A Python based light weight web framework. It’s relatively straight forward to use and allows us to control the GPIO directly.
RPIO – For this project I have moved away from the commonly used RPi.GPIO library as the servo control is less “jittery”. The RPIO library uses C to better manage the precise timings needed. Ultimately driving the servos via an Arduino or similar would provide the best results, but that was more complicated than I wanted to go.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!